The group blog of twelve quiltmakers and textile artists scattered around the world in 8 countries and across four continents. Our aim is to create a small quilt every three months.
The theme is chosen by the members in turn.
Our website: www.12bythedozen.weebly.com

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Saturday, 22 July 2017

August is a busy month here in bilsblog land so I too have been working on my Klimt challenge, though this hasn't been a struggle. Once I'd decided on the direction I wanted to take, this piece has virtually made itself. I must admit to not having considered the quilting as much as I should have before I began so I'm still auditioning different options to be able complete the piece by my self-imposed deadline! I give you my scraps -

Friday, 7 July 2017

My
grandmother taught me how to knit when I was about five or six years old, and I
have been involved with textiles ever since. Patchwork came into my life when I
was an exchange student in High School in the US and saw the first patchwork
pillows. After a period of self-taught traditional patterns (before the age of
internet etc.) I turned to contemporary design in 1994: My mother’s cure for my
then newly broken heart was an enrollment in a patchwork class. I started
teaching patchwork classes and hand-dyeing my own fabrics a few years later,
which has led to a small business with hand-dyed fabrics and a bi-monthly fabric club. I studied with Nancy Crow and other international teachers and am a
member of SAQA, SDA, the German Patchwork Guild (currently the International
Officer for the Guild) and QGBI. I write an English blog and a German blog (and I try to keep them different in topics).

When my son
started drawing at the age of 2 ½ I soon realized that his drawings -
completely standard for his development, nothing extraordinary - could be
turned into inspiration for my work, and I began using his drawings as a
starting point for my quilt designs. This led to a series “Play of Lines” which
kept me busy for several years; two large quilts of mine from this series were
exhibited in the “Color Improvisations” show curated by Nancy Crow.

Play of Lines X

Play of Lines VIII - this quilt is now on its way to be traveling with "Abstract and Geometric".

Other
series of mine are called Shapes, and, most recently, text messages. Shapes
began because I had an exhibition in a UNESCO World Heritage with two other
quilters which was the first building designed and built by Walter Gropius,
later founder of the famous Bauhaus Art School. So we had decided to use the
basic geometric shapes, which figured prominently in Bauhaus teaching, as
inspiration for the quilts that should be on display there.

Shapes 10

text
messages turned into a series when SAQA issued a call for entries under that
title. I had an idea right away, and then realized that I had already been
working with text before. And it adds on to my former academic life, when I was
a linguist.

Promised Land 2015? (text messages 9)

I have had
several solo exhibitions at international venues and been included in a number
of juried traveling international exhibitions.

For the
past three years it has been slightly harder to find enough and ample time for
quilting as I got involved with voluntary work helping refugees in Germany, and
for this past year I have been teaching German as a foreign language to a
refugee class as well. This is a very important aspect of my life right now, that
has also begun to enter my work. It will be interesting to see how it develops
here - apart from how the refugee situation in Germany and Europe will develop
in general.

Monday, 3 July 2017

Hello everybody. Thank you very much for inviting me to become a member of this group. As I was taking my time to decide whether I was up to the challenge I had to figure out whether my hesitations were because of 'starting with Klimt', or other reasons. He's not my favorite artist - but one grows with the challenge. And I have decided to use the only picture of a painting by him that I could find in one of my art books, so I am all set in terms of inspiration.
I will come back and introduce myself within the next few days and am looking forward to being part of this group!

I would like to welcome Uta Lenk from Germany to the group. She is our new member. Uta will stay with us even after Linda F has finished her new house and returns to the group. We will then have a 'Baker's Dozen' which is 13. Baker's Dozen

You can read all about Uta on her website where you can see many of her beautiful quilts. Her CV is very impressive. Colleen - a fellow long arm quilter to keep you company!

I am personally excited to have her on board and she will join us starting with Klimt.

Welcome, Uta. I hope you enjoy your time with us as we travel through series 3 and the challenge of being inspired by artists chosen by our members.

Friday, 2 June 2017

My life has just taken an interesting turn, and I am going to give up most, if not all, of my quilting connections for the next couple of years. Basically, Mick and I agreed last night to buy a house in Castle Donington, and to sell our two current houses. We had been looking for a suitable property since February, but could barely dream we would get this one. It's an old house, with some modern additions, and a huge garden, all within easy walking distance of the village centre. It's the one house in the village that I've said I would love for the past 20 years, and this is the first time it's been available in 64 years!!

On the down side, there's lots of work to be done, both before and after the move, and I won't have neither any time nor a studio for quite some time, so I'm very sadly bidding farewell to this group. I have loved being a member since it's start, and I'm particularly sad to be leaving just before you tackle Klimt. I shall continue to follow the group, and I will soon have more spare bedrooms available should any of you need to place to stay in this area of the UK.

I found this challenge difficult to come up with something that wasn't a close copy of his work. I thought about marbling (well done Colleen), I also wondered about dribbling paint/thickened dye! But I kept coming back to the wonderful Haida style of depicting animals, long admired.

Instead of a totem pole I have a totem tree with the inspiration coming from this Janvier painting. It seems to have struck a cord with others as well.

Janvier: Fort McMurray Series

In my Totem Tree the animals are digitized and embroidered by machine. The were chosen to represent the sky, the earth and water. The rest is fused applique and free machining. I will add more twiddly bits when I have a moment. You have no idea how much unpicking I had to do - nothing like being in a hurry and it being nearly midnight to put a spoke in the wheel! I decided to put it aside and apologise for being late. I'm not that happy with the end result - perhaps a bit more work on it will help...

Wednesday, 31 May 2017

It was so delightful to have Alex Janvier as our artist for this challenge. I was born and raised in Fort Benton, Montana, located 60 miles south of Alberta, Canada. Learning about Native American Indian culture was part of my upbringing so I was thrilled to learn more about him as a living indigenous artist raised in my part of North America. His art is truly unique with his strong sense of color, movement and lines. I especially marveled at his expert inclusion of animal symbols that are identified with tribes of the Pacific Northwest. He so skillfully places these in his work, that one must study his art to see what and where he includes them.

For my personal challenge, I began by using silk fusion pieces that I made in a workshop with Tamara Leberer at Quilt Adventures. I wanted to recreate the fluidity of color and shape of his work. "Premier Joy" (shown below) was my inspiration piece. I purposely layered silk fused shapes to intersect in a similar manner but very simply. To highlight these shapes and intersections, I edged them with silk sari cords that were couched on with invisible thread. To further enhance the colors, I positioned my silk fusion rendition onto fabric that was dyed to look like pulled string art. To finish, I included images of an eagle, a fish and a feather done in the style of Indigenous symbols.

HUNDERTWASSER-HAUS

Better late than never. I found this a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I thought I liked Hundertwasser's paintings until this challenge: I discovered that I only had an impression of them and I'd never really had a good look at them. I like his use of colour, but I dislike the way in which he used so many closely placed lines. However I really like his architectural designs and so I chose to interprete the Hundertwasser-haus in Vienna.

January Bloom

I am always trilled to be introduced to artists I've never heard about. This was no exception and like others I struggled on how to interpreter this talented artist. I didn't look too much at the photo, just did my own thing. Rosemary came close to what I had in mind!

I choose tread painting, my first try (and last?), I had such fun making it, but it was a chock that I could't make it flat with stretching and pressing. A useful lesson I think. So I had to double quilt the white background in order to "thame" it, to make it flat.

Not quite what I had in mind, not quite pleased with it, but I learned a lot and getting out of your comfort zone is always mind bogging.

Soon after selecting Janvier I decided to revisit the shaving foam marbling technique our Text'Art group played with a number of years ago. I would have liked to had another go at this as it's so much fun. However, I will ensure NOT to use scented shaving foam from the dollar store. I used a facing to complete the round shape and am pleased with the outcome.

I have always been under the impression one should never compose a design that falls off the page, or in this case the fabric! I have been proved wrong in this instance. I must confess that I found this artist very difficult at first and found it hard to be inspired as to how to put my inspiration across. However, as I studied his work I kept going back to pieces that did meander off the sides of his designs. I drew it up before I left to visit my daughter in the UK but didn't have time to do any adjustments on my return due to various unforseen health issues. In the end it was fun to put my drawing onto fabric and absolutely love the colours he uses so beautifully. Below are the pieces that inspired me and my final piece. I am happy with my finished piece. I did use paint and appliqued fabric and outlined everything in 12wt cotton thread and, although his backgrounds are very flat (as is his colour), I decided to quilt the background minimally. I was not sure if it should have been faced or bound but instinctively went for the binding in a slightly mottled, darker colour than the background as I desperately needed to enclose the design.